


light & fury

by Nemonus



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 13:57:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11381619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemonus/pseuds/Nemonus
Summary: The class swap fic. Eris Morn, Hidden Warlock, and Toland the Vitreous, Hunter weaponsmith, both follow Eriana-3 into her fight.





	light & fury

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr prompt: Eris and Toland's "first meeting in the class swap AU. Perhaps it's enough of a swap that Toland is Eriana's friend, and Eris is the Hive expert they call in to help defeat Crota?"

  
  
When Eris Morn learned the eighth sigil, she sighed as loud as she dared in the close tunnel. Eight were too many to make up the chord-locks of the Hive’s patron beasts. Eight was easy. Eight signified nothing except she had not found enough characters to read their alphabet.  
  
How reassuring.  
  
It had been three days since her Fireteam had scattered. Eris had done strange cold work among her fellow Guardians on Earth, but the pits beneath the Moon were stranger and more cold. Warlocks tended to forget that they lived in a half-dead world, Eris realized after that. She had expected to have a place to return to after all her wandering.  
  
Now she buried her chin against the collar of her cloak and kept reading the runes. Her vision was spotty, from hunger or strain. It became difficult to tell how far away the wall was, whether the light of the bond on her arm or the light from the runes on the gate was brighter. She had worked her way up through two locked doors so far. Many more and she would know the language well enough to speak it.  
  
Hive-pidgen, she thought of it as. Some was understandable enough in context, but other words had gaps in them, filled by what she supposed was a cultural assumption about the Light.  
  
The cloak on her back was weighted badly, bunched up around her collar. She adjusted it, abhorring the wet dust that had gathered. By now it all smelled like moon-dust and old rot and the colors of the cloak were camouflaged with blood and ichor. When she had been given it she had chuckled at how conspicuous the bright green was, scowled at how gaudy the pattern reminiscent of the gateway into the Hellmouth. The last-minute tactic had seemed ridiculous in the face of six healthy Guardians on their way to kill a prince.  
  
_"They'll believe you are one of their own. And that is the only way."_

* * *

  
Toland the Vitreous, Eriana-3 thought, would have been much more dangerous if he had known how to be charming.  
  
Maybe that was why he, unlike Osiris or Dredgen Yor, had never gathered a cult to himself. Instead, she thought that he gave the the impression of hardly believing his own ideas. They were fancies, and he loved them all the more for it.  
  
“Lord Shaxx is right about one thing,” he said lightly, before the Crucible match started. “Win and loss are the only really fundamental states of matter.”  
  
“Poetic,” Eriana had said. Maybe if he had inherited a bit more science from his cryptarch mentor, he would have made a heretic Warlock. As it was, he presented as a Hunter who ranged far enough to pull at the invisible, elastic strings of the wolfpack. His Vanguard had warned him.  
  
And Eriana, who could see right through him, had befriended him.  
  
He didn’t take her up on her offer of the Crucible often. There had been whispers while the team assembled - what was this lone buzzard, this particular strange Hunter, brought to the Crucible? Toland the Vitreous, they called him, burnt out by his own dark work until there was nothing left but glass.  
  
As soon as the team started running - it was a match for kills in vine-covered ruins - he switched guns. The one he held was sleek and golden, and quickly caught fire as he called the Sun. An animal’s spine wrapped around the barrel, the beaked skull pointing at the front. She had thought she might start to teach him some of the more applicable aspects of the Praxic Fire, but the weapon he held was half Golden Gun, parts manifesting from the Light itself.  
  
He shot one of his teammates in the head three times. The other Warlock slipped backwards, helmet burning, and their Ghost flared out before they hit the ground. They would wake up furious and confused, Eriana thought.  
  
“Toland, _no_!” Eriana yelled. He was running an experiment - she had done enough of her own to know.  
  
A few of the fighters stopped, presumably wondering why two Guardians on the same team were fighting with no objective in sight. Others ignored them, blasting across the Cosmodrome ruins they had drawn in the Crucible rotation lottery.  
  
Toland had always been a bit Warlockish.  
  
Eriana could sense the strange energies within the gun, the way it seemed to want to kill again. Toland seemed almost tugged as he knelt down beside the working Ghost, disinterested in the Guardians around him. He checked the clip, then turned to her.  
  
“Ah, it works," he said, then leaned in to the urgeful light of that Sun and shot the Ghost.

* * *

  
Shaxx pulled him out of the match and gave him to Cayde, but Eriana kept watch.  
  
“Why? Let go of that,” Eriana said, and took the gun from him. It fell in half, the Sun-stuff disappearing between her fingers and leaving her holding the precarious pieces of the hollow gun. Cayde had told them to wait on the Tower watch, above the Vanguard hall. The trickle of the water in the human-made streams seemed like a blaring distraction when Eriana was trying so hard to watch out for anyone who might walk in. Toland gave no impression of wanting to attack anyone again, but Eriana wanted to avoid any altercations. Toland’s experiment had been interesting, indeed. The gun had reacted to something, to its own mindless perception of having won a tiny part of the match. _Win and lose are the only really fundamental states …_  
  
Cayde-6 and Andal Brask walked onto the Tower watch with one bowl of ramen and one neon-green drink between them.  
  
“What _have_ we here?” Cayde was the louder one, always at Andal’s elbow, but Andal was the Vanguard. Toland looked at him.  
  
“Golden Gun draws from the Sun, and the Sun from the Light and the Light from the body,” Toland said. “That cycle can be picked apart and rearranged. I’ve made a golden gun that does not run out of shots.”  
  
“It feeds on dead Guardians,” Eriana said, still holding the pieces of Bad Juju stacked between her hands. The interiors were alarmingly organic-looking, with stringy support structures like in a bird’s hollow bones.  
  
Andal looked at Cayde, then back at Toland. “You brought that artifact back before, that strange cube. Is this related?”  
  
Toland held his hands out in front of him as if ready to be shackled. He wore the close-fitting Hunter garb in a green that looked not martial but simply as if it was rotting off of him. Eriana looked down at her own Praxic uniform as if expecting some sort of stain.  
  
“Don’t delay your sentence,” Toland said. “My experiment is done. We can threaten the very cage around our world with this.”  
  
“The Vanguard have already covered your view of the Warminds,” Andal answered quickly. This surprised Eriana; she hadn’t known he held such a view.  
  
“And your discussion will cease when the world falls down around your ears,” Toland said.  
  
“ _You killed a Guardian_ ,” Cayde enunciated slowly. The word he used indicated permanent death; it was beginning to be used in reference to Hive magic as well, sometimes ironically. It had been rare before the Hive incursion. Eriana was starting to miss those times. “Maybe we should get back to that?”  
  
“Things are piling up,” Andal said. “You leave your teammates behind to go off looking for ruins - and you’ve pestered the Vanguard about Rasputin more than Cayde has.”  
  
Cayde shrugged.  
  
“This has gone on long enough,” Andal said. His voice turned stentorian; he could act when he wanted to. “I will bring you before the Vanguard.”  
  
The silence stretched out, offering a hand and an ace up the sleeve; Toland could go politely or he could be removed in whatever unpleasant manner Andal thought fit.  
  
Eriana interrupted.  
  
“Let me talk to him first,” she said. She found authority in her voice by reminding herself that she was not under the Hunters’ jurisdiction. “I’m interested in the way he used Golden Gun. I study the Praxic Fire. This could be of use to us.”  
  
Although Eriana was not a senior member of her order, the followers of the Praxic Creed were well known for being practical - for Warlocks. Hunters joked that this meant decisions required only two days of meditative contemplation. It helped that Eriana was known for being solidly personable. She watched Andal decide how much she knew about what was likely to happen if Toland saw all three Vanguard. Exile could be as formal as an appearance from the Speaker or as informal as a quick and impermanent death.  
  
In the end, the expression Eriana saw in Andal’s eyes was a deep sympathy for her and Toland’s friendship.  
  
“In ten minutes I’ll send Shaxx back up here,” Andal said, and left.  
  
Eriana caught Cayde lifting the green drink in a salute to his mentor’s back as he followed.  
  
Toland tried to slide away; Eriana caught him by the shoulders. “Don’t say a word,” she said, then shook her head. He wouldn’t manage it. “I’m going to hide you before they can exile you,” she said, and for a moment he looked surprised at her apparent clairvoyance.  
  
She was right that he couldn’t manage to be quiet, but chattiness itself was not suspicious. They took the elevator down, and worked on a cover story.  


* * *

  
When Eris heard Eriana’s name around the Tower more often, she felt a mix of jealousy and pride.

They had been friends early in their new lives, two Warlocks with the same wry sense of humor and a comfort with sitting beside one another and studying in silence for hours. Their own ascensions had helped drive them apart, though; as Eriana became more dedicated to the Praxic Creed and Eris to the more esoteric work favored by Ikora their missions took them to far-off places. When Eris was inducted into the Hidden after a particularly spectacular stealth mission against the Hive incursion, her friendship with Eris faded quietly like the colors on an old cloak. If they had skipped time and seen the change, it would have been shocking, but because time progressed the normal way the transition into almost complete silence was itself unnoticed.  
  
The Hidden had offered prime opportunities for a Voidwalker, and so Eris had become used to conspiring and spying, to seeing in Ikora’s eyes the secrets that they shared.  
  
Now, Ikora was keeping her comm open while Eris trailed a Hive commander in the Cosmodrome. There had been reports of an unusually organized swarm, of a towering Knight with a sword that made a name for itself among younger Guardians.  
  
“Find out at least where they’re based. Maybe what they call themselves," Ikora said.  
  
“Their names are fascinating, actually. Did I mention to you that they seem to have no names distinguished by gender?” Eris always felt a bit hesitant talking to someone as accomplished and brilliant as the Vanguard, but she also knew that Ikora shared her interest in ephemera. Eris was not a magpie of a Warlock, the sort that coveted their own personal library; instead she gathered facts, ideas she could carry around without adding any weight to her blue robes.  
  
“You hadn’t,” Ikora said.  
  
Eris continued walking along the hillside, avoiding snowy patches that might be slippery. She had not tried to disguise herself and instead walked openly, passively monitoring the emanations of Darkness she could feel from the other side.  
  
“I’m almost at the site,” Eris said.  
  
“Good.”  
  
Eris wanted to say something else, some formality or pleasantry for closure, but Ikora’s voice had closed off in that authoritative way that she had, and Eris knew that if she herself spoke now she would tend to babble. So instead she remained quiet as she walked around the sharp cliff of rock that made up the oceanward side of the hill. In front of her now the grassland sloped down to the sluggish water. To her left was the gash in the hill that lead to the cave.  
  
Eris readied the gun in her hand as the Hive sniffed her out, but she didn’t expect to have to use it.  
  
First the eyes appeared in threes and sixes in the cave, then the thralls lurched themselves out of the darkness with their sideways gait and screamed toward her. Eris Morn waited. Not exactly covert work, this, but there were more difficult ways to study them, and Osiris had suggested that she couldn’t capture an entire pack of Hive at once on her own, so she had just had to —  
  
Ah, there, the traps. Eris had formed them out of the Hive’s own filaments, the metal pieces they tended to drive into the Earth. Ikora permitted this as long as it remained in the realms of linguistics and engineering and did not turn into magic, and Eris was equally committed to upholding that separation.  
  
Thrall zig-zagged forward and the Knights followed, lumbering, and Eris ducked as blasts from energy weapons splashed past her. She knew though —  
  
The traps snapped upward out of the ground, green fire burning on the edges of the metal ribs. The one holding the sword-bearer worked too well. The Hive commander dissolved into dust, shrieking. Eris could not tell whether it had dashed itself against the bars with its momentum or not. The Hive seemed to glory in killing others, but not necessarily in mindless loss; Eris thought for a moment that the Knight must have been disappointed in itself. Then she put one hand over the bottom of her helmet, wanting to cover her mouth. She still stood in front of a pack of trapped thrall, and the relief at her plan working was slowly draining away and leaving fear in its wake.  
  
There were some garbled noises on the comm, and Eris felt her heart sink. “Are you okay?”  
  
Quickly, the signal stabilized. “Thank you for trapping that brood, Eris,” Ikora said.  
  
“It didn’t work. I’m sorry. The sword bearer …” Eris wrinkled her nose in embarrassed amusement at her own overkill. “Disintegrated.”  
  
“No matter. It’s time to come back,” Ikora said kindly, and quickly enough that Eris only had time to open her mouth in shock. “It’s time to send our armies to the Moon.”  


* * *

  
For a while, Toland’s most pressing concern was the war.  
  
Eriana had gathered her troops in a small apartment in the City, kitted out for a short-term stay and taken by Toland for a longer one. The fireteam loved her, and gathered around her in a flock when she announced that their last team member would be coming soon. Eris Morn was a quietly competent Warlock known mostly for being a closed-mouthed confidante of Ikora Rey, Eriana had said. Later she had added that she and Eris had once been friends, but that their respective work with the Praxic Warlocks, and, supposedly, with Ikora’s Hidden had pulled them apart. Perhaps this was why she was nervous, or because the team hadn’t yet cohered. Vell Tarlowe, the Titan from the Pilgrim Guard, seemed to suffer from a mild claustrophobia in the City and so tended to puff up like a pigeon to show his strength.  
  
“Don’t fret,” Toland whispered to Eriana. She was running hot, not the Sun but her servos heating up the edge of his sleeve. “Your pets won’t hurt the spy.”  
  
“Between your fascination and her experience we have all the Hive expertise we need.” Eriana’s tone was strong, as if she were addressing the Vanguard. Later, Toland thought that she might regret such conviction. She had already framed him and Eris as complementary, as a likely pair of researchers.  
  
Now, Eriana waited with the group for the Hidden Warlock to arrive. Toland began to feel impatient, standing in formation like this as if they were petitioners at the Vanguard’s beckon call instead of a rogue fireteam breaking the Lunar Interdict.  
  
When Eris arrived there was no fanfare, no sneaking. She did not appear out of thin air or in a cloud of Voidlight. She walked in through the door, wearing bronze-plated Voidfang Vestments and with her helmet tucked under her arm. Perhaps there was a hint of clandestine energy in the way she edged over to Eriana, who quickly and unreservedly clasped her elbow.  
  
“Thank you for coming,” Eriana said. Her lights blinked sincere acknowledgement, doubling the thanks for those who could read Exo expressions.  
  
Eris surveyed the group, full lips slightly open. “The opportunity to study the Hive is incredible, but the, uh, cause is more worthy.”  
  
Her voice hesitated a bit over the formal words, becoming more resonant as she faltered. Toland found himself wondering whether there was a pattern in that he could predict if he listened long enough.  
  
Eriana continued the formality with a bow of her head, but when she started to introduce the group members individually she made it almost immediately clear that theirs was not a strict affect to go with the deadly serious mission. Omar joked that Eris had probably forgotten more about the Hive than he ever knew, and her response was gracious and wry. Eriana brought her to Toland last.  
  
“Our other Hunter,” Eriana said softly. “Toland the Vitreous, the weaponsmith.” She looked at Eris to see her reaction. “He was exiled.”  
  
Eris equally softly pulled a breath in.  
  
Toland perceived the Darkness on Eris as a gauzy cloak over her clothing. Peel the surface away and you would have a sheet of Hive-stuff, likely to sprout signal towers and green crystals. It would come off clean, though. Eris was not herself corrupted.  
  
“I hear you are exceptionally familiar with our enemy,” he said. It was an expression of curiosity, but, he admitted to himself, also a challenge. She too immersed herself in studies that could easily cause Guardians on her team to die, even if it was not on purpose.  
  
“I study them.” She said, sharp eyes glinting in a sharp face. “That does not mean I love them.”  
  
“We devote ourselves to what we will,” he said, and took her hand. He knew from the weight of the word that he felt for her - to say _devote_ in front of her felt suddenly personal and dangerous. And that, of course, made his words to her a tender and fascinating lie. There was no willpower left to him, now that he had felt this.  
  
Eris Morn shook Toland’s hand, and he filed his own interest away.  
  
Later he would catch her while he was reading in their fireteam’s hideaway, the place Eriana had set up for him before Crota was even a storm on the horizon. She would wait by the edge of the bookshelf and extend her awareness to him, a wash of Voidlight filled with patterns and mathematics he could not fathom, and he would glow with the Sun and light one of the pages of the books for her. He thought that she must be surprised to see a Hunter flitting around the shelves. She explained to him some of the Hive sigils that she recognized, and he just listened.  
  
Even later, he noticed that she would find excuses to stay after the rest of the team had gone, and she would tell him about the terrors of the Hive, and the way they believed in wins and losses. It was after agreeing with one of these statements that he touched her hands again, play-fighting in jabs and bait-and-switches. When they paused with their fingers tangled, he stooped to kiss both of their hands. She smirked when his lips brushed his own knuckles.  
  
For a while, Toland’s most pressing concerns were her and the war.

* * *

  
Some of the runes must have been missing. Eris had worked out what the sequence should be, but there was no sigil for the ninth character. She could keep working on them, driving herself to distraction, or she could turn around and find a more defensible spot. Soon, she thought, she would not have a choice.  
  
She turned and saw another glow.  
  
How far away? What letter did that represent? What sound did it make?  
  
She wondered whether she might see a trio of green eyes in the dark, and be unsure whether it was an enemy or a delusion borne from hope. Toland, the Vitreous, had been wearing that mask before he disappeared.  
  
Eris had thought once that she could fight the Hive using their own tools without becoming as evil as they were. Funny, how she had not entirely been wrong. She could keep her pure intent. What the Hive worshipped wasn’t about intent, really; the swordlogic was a physical law, and all along Eris had been following it like the ocean followed the Moon.  
  
Toland, though, had dived right in. The last she had seen him alive he was fleeing down a tunnel, crying nonsense words, making sounds like might have been Hive names if he had ever learned them properly. After that, there had been the body and the Deathsinger she and Eriana fought. Both of them had looked for some trace of Hive magic and found none. Toland had not found the words to unlock his gate either.  
  
She could imagine, though, that those were his false eyes. She could imagine eyes all around her, his face ghosting through the rock between her hands where she had crouched over in the tunnel. The deaths of her teammates felt like dreams now, and she supposed she should be thankful for it. Her brain was shifting these things into the category of nightmare so that she could keep going, so that the guilt and terror would stay distant until they leaked out somehow. She could not weep, except for the messy, tar-colored ichor that bled from the cracked skin around her eyes.  
  
The Hive had been an abstraction to her for a little while, and now they were just a gate.  
  
She turned back to the door and started working on a new idea about how to bypass the ninth sigil.

**Author's Note:**

> Once [Illumynare](http://archiveofourown.org/users/illumynare/pseuds/illumynare) suggested that Eris and Toland’s backgrounds should be swapped along with their classes, I had to figure out how that happened - and so it became part of what was supposed to be a thousand-word story. Well. The resulting timeline becomes kinder to its characters at the beginning and crueler by the end, I suppose. Eris is more accomplished at the beginning of this story than I imagine she was in canon, forced as she was out from under Eriana’s wing. She has the Warlock penchant for study but an emotional distance from the Hive that Toland never managed. Toland has only half of his canon obsessions - he’s desperately fearful and sees other Guardians as potential subjects for experimentation, but never researched the Hive enough to speak convincingly to Ir Yût. Therefore he never became quite as infamous as he was in canon, and was never technically “shattered” - although still more than willing to abandon his team. I tried to keep these differences in mind.


End file.
